Guinea inaugurates ACE landing station in Conakry

Oye Guilavogui, Guinea’s Minister of Communications & New Information Technologies, has revealed that the official opening of the local Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable landing station, located in capital Conakry, will take place today. According to Agence Ecofin, fibre-optic infrastructure will be soon deployed to the rest of Guinea’s territory; the new network is expected to enable telecom operators to significantly increase transmission speeds, while also reducing prices.

According to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database, the ACE cable landed in Conakry in September 2011. In addition to a USD34 million loan from the World Bank to bring the cable to the country, in January 2013 Guilavogui secured a USD350 million loan from the Chinese government for the construction of a 4,000km national fibre-optic backbone project. A public-private partnership, Guineenne de la Large Bande SA (GUILAB), was commissioned to operate and manage the system. Further, GUILAB was authorised to monitor the build-out of the fibre-optic infrastructure and validate the capacity allocated to each operator.